One of the designers who made it happen

Super responsive to requests and criticism, offered good ideas without arguing. A strong candidate from the first submission.

- Anonymous

How YossiH started their web page design journey

Company name

openQloud, powered by SYNAQ

Overview

SYNAQ is a pioneering technology company situated in South Africa that develops email services and solutions for small to medium sized businesses in Africa. Our solutions are all delivered via "the-cloud". Meaning that we've invested in all the technical stuff (the hardware, the software, the people, the systems, etc) so that our customers can get all the good stuff (spam free email, email archiving, email collaboration and more) without having to worry about the technicalities behind it or the cost.

We are a young company passionate about what we do and changing the world in our own small way. Our company mantra is "reducing the barriers to technology" and we're passionate about making technology simpler, more affordable and more accessible for our customers.

We are about to launch a new initiative that we believe will revolutionise the industry and want to create a micro-site to launch this new service.

In Africa, bandwidth is extremely expensive and is the major inhibitor preventing companies from embracing cloud computing. We want to break this barrier by giving our customers free, unlimited bandwidth (Internet access) to our cloud services. i.e. they wont pay for any of the bandwidth that they use to access our email services. This is what we call "openQloud" unlimited high-speed access to the cloud, at zero cost.

Tell us a bit about who you are and the people you reach

The target audience for this campaign are IT Managers, Financial Directors and Managing Directors of small to medium sized businesses (50 to 500 people) that are interested in moving their email systems to the cloud but have always been hesitant to do so because of the perceived bandwidth related costs and speeds in doing so.

They are generally male and between the ages of 28 and 45. English speaking. Are normally not too technical but understand enough about technology and the latest buzz words (like cloud computing). Are in charge of the IT department within their company and have limited technical resources available to them at the company which they represent.

What they are looking for is an affordable hassle-free way to solve their email problems with the peace of mind that everything is taken care of by a focused and reputable provider so they can focus on their core business and not have to worry about email.

The microsite needs to be designed around the openQloud logo (previous 99designs contest) and be extremely impactful to this target audience showing the excitement and "largeness" of this new service offering.

The site therefore has to depict what the service is doing, essentially opening up the cloud providing our customers with high speed free access to our cloud services.

Requirements

We're looking for a 4 to 5 page site that we can explain the service and attract leads with. The site needs to immediately depict to our potential customers what openQloud is about - that we're here to remove the barriers to technology for our customers and revolutionise their accessibility to the cloud, for free - while showing that we are a professional, reputable and reliable company. The website will be used to drive all traffic to promote the openQloud service. Users will go to http://www.openqloud.co.za

Fishbone allows companies to take multiple ADSL lines and combine them into one single pipe providing high speed internet access. Through our openQloud offer, customers can get the benefits of Fishbone but at zero cost - simply by signing up for any of our email services.

We also require an add banner that we can use on pay for advertisting sites to push traffic to the micro-site.

The payoff line for the site and banner is "Every cloud needs an orange lining" linking our Orange CI and brand to the campaign. Please design the site and ad banners around this as the core.

Number of pages

1

Page descriptions

The site is a 3 page micro site containing a visually effective landing page that explains the service and prompts people to contact us for more information by submitting their name, email address and phone number (see openQloud.docx).

A frequently asked questions page giving a lot more detail about the offer, who its available for and what you need to do to qualify and an about us page which gives a bit more info about who we are, who our partners are and why we're trying to open the cloud in South Africa.

The entire campaign is being built around the notion that "Every cloud needs an orange lining" basically saying that we're making the cloud accessible to small and medium sized business through openQloud.
We call this "breaking the cloud barrier" which is linked to our company mantra of "breaking the barriers to technology"

The design should follow that of the openQloud logo (attached) while keeping inline with our brand identity (see attached brand identity document).